


For Always

by greenbucket



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: F/F, Fluff, Future Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-21
Updated: 2017-11-21
Packaged: 2019-02-05 00:12:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12782679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greenbucket/pseuds/greenbucket
Summary: The wintery morning light is still so pale where it comes in through the window. Lardo can think of a million things they could do today alone, big and small and everything in between.





	For Always

Lardo wakes up for about half a minute when Ford gets out of bed at a quarter past five to shower.

“Shh, go back to sleep,” Ford says, a little husky from her own sleep, before Lardo has even got out her usual garbled _oh shit dude it’s so fucking early why do you do this go back to sleep oh god_.

“Mmmnuhgh,” Lardo says in reply, wriggling over to the warmth left behind where Ford had been and wrapping the blankets tighter around herself.

Ford bangs her toe against the bedside cabinet in the dark and swears loudly and efficiently, disembodied in the still dark room, and Lardo finds herself making some grossly fond face into the pillow. She just catches the beginnings of Ford’s almost-tuneful shower singing before the fact that it’s fucking five in the morning pulls her back into sleep.

Of course, once she’s been woken up once she’s not gonna be able to go back to sleep for long. Ford always makes sure to close the front door extra quiet like Lardo’s a baby she’s just got down to nap so Lardo usually misses her leaving but before long the neighbourhood wakes up and brings noise with it. When Lardo wakes up the second time, the apartment is still and cold and quiet, even for all the rumble of cars and people outside, and for a moment she feels kinda desolate.

It lasts for about a second. The side of the bed she’s migrated over to still smells like Ford’s products – and not enough like their detergent, she notes, so they’re probs going to need to change the sheets sometime soon – and it’s still early enough that she can feel the possibilities of the day stretching out before her. As much as Lardo likes to sleep in until the sun actually rises, she knows she always turns snappy and irritable when she wakes up way late to a day half gone.

Ford’s forgotten again to crack the window open to allow the shower steam out when Lardo makes it to the bathroom and the whole place, floor to walls to toilet seat, is slick with condensation. Lardo is going to make a sign and get it laminated and stick it somewhere Ford can’t miss, just so there’s more than a 20 percent chance they’ll get their deposit back if they ever want to move.

The air is shockingly cold when she pushes the stiff window open and Lardo wants to brush her teeth extra hard, plus mouthwash, and then take a deep breath in like she was a kid. When she does it sears her throat enough to make her eyes water, the mouthwash they have now a lot stronger than the for-kids version her mom had supervised her through using way back when.

She’s pretty sure the sweats and hoodie she pulls on after her own shower are both further down the line of should-this-go-in-laundry than she’d like to admit, but neither actively smell bad so Lardo figures she can stretch it out for today at least.

The kitchen is a lot colder than the humidity of the bathroom; they both forgot to pull the blinds down the night before. Again. Fuck knows what their neighbours have seen going on in their kitchen over the years.

Lardo’s just checking the apples in the fruit bowl through a series of pokes and squeezes when there’s the familiar scrabble-whine-clunk of the lock mechanism’s slow death – one day, they’re either gonna get locked out or locked in and everyone in their contacts is going to reply with nothing but a ‘told you so’, Lardo can sense it – and the sound of Ford throwing her embarrassing running fanny pack in the pile of bags.

She’s all glistening with sweat still when she comes in from the hall. Lardo appreciates most sport at a level of sorta to actual personal enjoyment, but her appreciation for Ford’s running is a heavy part aesthetic. Ford energised and keen and sporty in the still-early light in their kitchen strikes something emotional in Lardo’s chest, sure, because sometimes it’s still something to grasp that they’re really doing this, but as a concept it also falls pretty perfectly on the line between _wow I wanna art her_ and _wow I wanna make out with her_. It’s a tricky balance but, in honesty, it plays a big part in how little Lardo complains about being woken up at bullshit hours three times a week, if the way Ford bounces on the balls of her feet when she talks about her running bros wasn’t enough.

“You’re up,” Ford says, pleased, like Lardo isn’t always up when she gets back, apart from the times where she only goes to sleep a little before Ford leaves.

Ford smells strongly of sweat when she leans in to fill her water bottle up in the sink and kisses Lardo on the cheek, but at least it’s the fresh and clean kind and not the stale and embedded kind that both of them swear they still catch a whiff of sometimes, hockey-kit free though their apartment may be. Lardo would try and pull Ford in for a for real kiss, because energised and keen and sporty and hot, but she’d just taken a bite of the least squishy apple and now juice is running all down her chin where Ford jostled her.

Ford wipes at the juice with her thumb for her, amused and apologetic, and says, “I’m going to shower and then we should eat.”

Lardo holds up her apple.

“Actual breakfast, I’m starving,” Ford clarifies. “Plus those apples are all mushy and grainy, I meant to cut them up for the birds the other day.”

Lardo shrugs; the apple tastes a little weird, but not too bad.

Ford’s singing isn’t as audible from the kitchen, but Lardo lets the hum of the pipes keep her company instead as she tries to piece together something filling from the remains of their grocery trip two and a bit weeks ago. It’s been a busy period, both of them in and out of the house at all kinda hours and too exhausted to do much but curl up on the couch in shared peace and quiet each evening, and groceries have fallen to the wayside pretty badly.

Breakfast manages to be toast: a savoury slice each with tomato-y paste and one slice of chicken on it for Lardo and two chicken slices for Ford because protein, and a dessert slice each with the last scraps of an apricot jam from Bitty spread as evenly as Lardo can. She puts some cereal bars by Ford’s plate to make up for it, and fills two mugs with the only herbal tea they can both agree on, feeling a mix of pride and warm, comfortable familiarity when she sets the mugs down not thirty seconds before Ford comes back from the shower.

“We need to get some groceries, huh?” she says, taking a seat and a bite of the savoury toast enthusiastically enough all the same.

“We’re all out of cereal, fruit, most vegetables, juice, almost all the bread and the milk,” Lardo confirms. “And we have a fuck load of rice but about a handful of pasta.”

“What about pancakes?” Ford asks. “We have the ingredients for those, don’t we?”

Lardo could spot the sneaky teasing look in Ford’s eye a mile off. “So it’s gotta be pancakes now? Stale chicken tomato apricot toast isn’t good enough?”

“Hey, I ran so much today already. Like, all the runs.”

“Out of your own choice,” Lardo reminds her. “You could’ve slept in with me. I can think of some fitness stuff we coulda done instead.”

Ford kicks Lardo under the table, leaves her bare ankle against Lardo’s after. “You don’t know the shame of the ‘we missed you!’ wall. I deserve pancakes and sex just for the exhaustion of having that hanging over me.”

“If you wanted pancakes and sex you shouldn’t have signed up for a running club that starts at the asscrack of dawn,” Lardo says, mock-sniffy as she can be around a mouthful of toast. “I don’t know if I’m in the mood anymore.”

Ford sighs and says, forlorn, “Where did the romance go, all that spark. They’re right, it all dries up in the end,” but her ankle is still pressed against Lardo’s and the corner of her mouth is turned up slyly, mutedly, like she can’t help it. When Lardo makes an unimpressed face at her, the smile emerges for real, her cheeks all bunched up like in the photos Ford’s mom insists on pulling out whenever they visit.

The wintery morning light is still so pale where it comes in through the window. Lardo can think of a million things they could do today alone, big and small and everything in between.

“Let’s go grocery shopping, and then we can buy something with a fuck load of sugar and split it after we have sex but before we have to get back to, like, actually doing shit,” Lardo says, the day unfolding in her mind. “How’s that for romance?”

“Be still my beating heart,” Ford says, dry, and steals the crusts of Lardo’s toast that she was gonna get to in a minute.

There’s a moment, then, where Lardo remembers time ago would have been the moment they would have shared an _I love you,_ back when saying the words still had a sickening, jittery, breathless rush. It passes. They don’t need to, now; Lardo knows it like a bedrock truth.

Ford huffs a laugh to herself as she scrolls through her phone, mugs still half-full of still steaming tea between them on the table, and Lardo sketches out in her mind the laminated bathroom sign she’s gonna make so Ford remembers to open the damn window. She can already hear the way Ford will laugh, bright and caught out, and march back out to Lardo with the offending sign in hand, probs wrapped in the same ugly multicolored towel she’s had since undergrad, like a certainty.


End file.
